So even if a person jettisons the death and authenticity stuff, the unveiling description of all the structure of the mundane that we usually ignore as too close to us is a game changer. — mask
his phenomenological analysis of "average everydayness" has always beens striking to me. His Introduction to Metaphysics should be read by anyone serious about Heidegger, and would be my recommendation to you if you haven't already. — Xtrix
can’t find this passage. To tell the truth, I don’t even recognize it, my keyword searches don’t lead me to it, and because I’m too lazy to peruse all my literature even after thumbing through some of it, would you please refer me to its source? — Mww
Correct. Given that all humans incorporate the same rational system, all reality in general should be consistent among them. A basketball is such for me as it is such for you. Even if I have no experience of them, if you tell me about one, I should understand what you’re talking about and form a representation of it a priori for myself. This is for the most part because of the categories, which permits conception of an object in general without all the the necessary intuitions given from perception. — Mww
I’m not sure what geometry is having to be saved from, unless you meant illusory appearance. — Mww
The science of relativity is grounded in Galileo’s mind alone, isn’t it? Einstein may or may not have thought SR and GR on his own, even if there never was a Galileo, but he didn’t. — Mww
If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" means - must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?
Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! --Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.
That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant. — Wittgenstein
This is extremely hard to explain without saying ‘read Kant’. He is careful with he words - too careful perhaps - and asks a lot of his reader.
The most simplistic way to view all this is, as I previously said, by regarding a priori as the canvas and a posteriori as the paint - either alone produce no picture and it is only through the former (a priori) that we make this deduction. — I like sushi
https://sites.google.com/site/diogenesphil/lkWhereas Locke’s ‘things themselves’ are objects of scientific investigations (especially by the corpuscular hypothesis), Kant’s ‘things in themselves’ are thoroughly unknowable. But despite their unknowability, Kant affirms the existence of things in themselves, and this has been viewed for a long time as one of the serious problems in Kant’s philosophy. According to Kant, things in space (and their properties) are nothing but representations ‘in us’, and appearances qua representations necessarily demand the existence of things in themselves (though these are unknowable). From an historical point of view, however, if Descartes’ and Locke’s theories of ideas do not precede it, such a view must be unintelligible. If I may limit my consideration to Locke and Kant, perhaps we can say that Kant’s ‘things in themselves’ are the product of a degeneration of Lockean ‘things themselves’. In other words, Kant’s concept of ‘things in themselves’ would not make sense without the model of Locke’s naturalistic theory of ideas,[4] and as a result of its degeneration, the framework of his transcendental idealism seems to have a distorted logic.
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As already mentioned, Locke’s ‘things themselves’ are single corpuscles or aggregates of corpuscles that possess only primary qualities (and powers based on them). They affect our sense organs qua aggregates of corpuscles, and accordingly a sort of motion is communicated to the brain. As a result, sensible ideas are produced in the mind. By contrast, in Kant’s case, ‘things in themselves’ are not known to us, and since space is a form of our sensibility, the idea that things in themselves are in space does not make sense. But though he has such a view, Kant repeatedly emphasizes that sensible representations are given to us by ‘things in themselves’ affecting our minds or senses.
Why does Kant assert the existence of the unknown ‘things in themselves’? — Tomida
Kant’s things in themselves, which correspond to Locke’s things themselves, affect our senses and in this sense they certainly bear a quasi-causal character. However, the concept of cause that Kant regards as one of the pure concepts of understanding is applicable only to appearances qua representations.
...
Hegelians and Kantians often say that Kant synthesizes empiricism and rationalism. Indeed, on the one hand, he acknowledges the affection by things in themselves and regards the objects of our experience as mental; on the other hand, he acknowledges various a priori items in the mind and regards their rational consequences as important. However, his synthesis is performed by tacitly accepting the naturalistic logic of ideas that Locke shares with Descartes, and at the same time distorting it. In this sense, Kant’s antinaturalistic, transcendental idealism rests on a tacit naturalistic basis. — Tomida
Things in themselves are not perceived, only thought. — David Mo
Your mistake was here. — David Mo
Kant’s things in themselves, which correspond to Locke’s things themselves, affect our senses and in this sense they certainly bear a quasi-causal character. — Tomida
Cool. Thanks. I admit to not thumbing far enough, or thumbing right over it. I lost my place in answering your question. Are you ok with the responses you got, or is there anything you’re still unsatisfied with? — Mww
I think we do have the same rational system, more or less, but believing this seems to depend on experience — mask
If the language that the individual thinks in is forged socially, then Heidegger has a point with his being-in-the-world and being-with-others as a deeper layer than the epistemological theory of the individual mind processing sensation with an innate set of concepts. — mask
The system is complete in itself; the content of the system is predicated on experience, yes. And it really doesn’t matter what name a theory subsumes the system under, as long as they all agree we as humans all have the same faculties. — Mww
[T]he empirical is the transcendental of the transcendental (of the empirical). — Bennington page 278
That may all well be, but it bears keeping in mind that peope don’t think qua think, in language; people think, meaning the private subjective rational activity, in images. — Mww
According to Heidegger, Descartes presents the world to us “with its skin off” (Being and Time 20: 132), i.e., as a collection of present-at-hand entities to be encountered by subjects. The consequence of this prioritizing of the present-at-hand is that the subject needs to claw itself into a world of equipmental meaning by adding what Heidegger calls ‘value-predicates’ (context-dependent meanings) to the present-at-hand. In stark contrast, Heidegger's own view is that Dasein is in primary epistemic contact not with context-independent present-at-hand primitives (e.g., raw sense data, such as a ‘pure’ experience of a patch of red), to which context-dependent meaning would need to be added via value-predicates, but rather with equipment, the kind of entity whose mode of Being is readiness-to-hand and which therefore comes already laden with context-dependent significance. — link
There is another part that is outdated: mathematics is universal. — David Mo
Here's the crux: our rationality. Being-with-others, a universal-transcendental subject. Not just me. At the base of the I as its most truthful-accurate version is an ideal we. I must manage my bias (my unreason) in order to see from and with the ideal we (our reason).but those rationalities wouldn’t be the same as ours. — Mww
A worth endeavor perhaps, but the nature of human subjectivity seems to prohibit, or at least seriously impair, its possibility. — Mww
The cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense — Hobbes
What it seems important as principle in Kant is the regulative use of the reason. That is to say: physics principles are a priori because they come from a priori conditions of our knowledge, not being things in themselves. This links with Kuhnian concept of paradigm and with quantum paradoxes of measurement, relativity, etc. We live a world mediated by the categories of our way of thinking. — David Mo
And that's all I care about. — Xtrix
Linguistic convention says there are basketballs out there; transcendental idealism says there are objects out there only called basketballs because the human represents the object to himself as such. — Mww
To give a stock example, the Earth orbited the Sun long before humans came on the scene to construct a theory of heliocentrism. It seems that we can talk about that in ordinary language (introducing scientific or mathematical language where relevant). What does Kant's system, or subject/object dualism generally, contribute here?
— Andrew M
transcendental realism...regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensiblity). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding.
CPR, A369 — Wayfarer
What you're not seeing is the way the mind - not just your mind, or my mind - constructs the entire stage within which perspective and judgements of the age of the Universe exist.
"The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'."
(Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271) — Wayfarer
It would seem that the theory is exclusively concerned with ‘results of measurements’ and has nothing to say about anything else. When the ‘system’ in question is the whole world where is the ‘measurer’ to be found? Inside, rather than outside, presumably. What exactly qualifies some subsystems to play this role? Was the world wave function waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer for some more highly qualified measurer — with a Ph.D.? If the theory is to apply to anything but idealized laboratory operations, are we not obliged to admit that more or less ‘measurement-like’ processes are going on more or less all the time more or less everywhere? Is there ever then a moment when there is no jumping and the Schrödinger equation applies? — John S. Bell - Quantum mechanics for cosmologists
Alternatively, let's see what your reading commits you to here. Before sentient life emerged on Earth there were no conscious observers. — Andrew M
'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ... that is impossible.'
Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was ... first, the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.
The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.
This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood [i.e. we have to learn to look at our naturalistic spectacles rather than just through them, which takes a kind of cognitive shift.]
Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.
As I see it, Descartes was confused by mind idioms that lead to him positing his mind/body distinction. — Andrew M
I don't know much about Locke, except his (relative) liberalism. I get the impression that he's much simpler than Kant. If you want present the case for Locke, I would like to read it.But why not Locke? — mask
Where is mathematics then? It seems to me that as a matter of experience mathematics is relatively uncontroversial. We all agree that there are an infinity of primes. It seems we infer a shared hard-wired mathematical faculty from this consensus. — mask
Kant’s things in themselves, which correspond to Locke’s things themselves,
Kant’s antinaturalistic, transcendental idealism rests on a tacit naturalistic basis. — Tomida
If you want present the case for Locke, I would like to read it. — David Mo
I see no reason, therefore, to believe that the soul thinks before the senses have furnished it with ideas to think on; and as those are increased and retained, so it comes, by exercise, to improve its faculty of thinking in the several parts of it; as well as, afterwards, by compounding those ideas, and reflecting on its own operations, it increases its stock, as well as facility in remembering, imagining, reasoning, and other modes of thinking. — Locke
Secondly, That though the proper and immediate signification of words
are ideas in the mind of the speaker, yet, because by familiar use from
our cradles, we come to learn certain articulate sounds very perfectly,
and have them readily on our tongues, and always at hand in our
memories, but yet are not always careful to examine or settle their
significations perfectly; it often happens that men, even when they
would apply themselves to an attentive consideration, do set their
thoughts more on words than things. Nay, because words are many of them
learned before the ideas are known for which they stand: therefore some,
not only children but men, speak several words no otherwise than parrots
do, only because they have learned them, and have been accustomed to
those sounds. But so far as words are of use and signification, so far
is there a constant connexion between the sound and the idea, and a
designation that the one stands for the other; without which application
of them, they are nothing but so much insignificant noise.
Words, by long and familiar use, as has been said, come to excite in men
certain ideas so constantly and readily, that they are apt to suppose
a natural connexion between them. But that they signify only men's
peculiar ideas, and that BY A PERFECT ARBITRARY IMPOSITION, is evident,
in that they often fail to excite in others (even that use the same
language) the same ideas we take them to be signs of: and every man has
so inviolable a liberty to make words stand for what ideas he pleases,
that no one hath the power to make others have the same ideas in their
minds that he has, when they use the same words that he does. And
therefore the great Augustus himself, in the possession of that power
which ruled the world, acknowledged he could not make a new Latin word:
which was as much as to say, that he could not arbitrarily appoint what
idea any sound should be a sign of, in the mouths and common language of
his subjects. It is true, common use, by a tacit consent, appropriates
certain sounds to certain ideas in all languages, which so far limits
the signification of that sound, that unless a man applies it to the
same idea, he does not speak properly — Locke
We get abstract ideas from experience, by erasing unimportant differences.The next thing to be considered is,--How general words come to be made.
For, since all things that exist are only particulars, how come we by
general terms; or where find we those general natures they are supposed
to stand for? Words become general by being made the signs of
general ideas: and ideas become general, by separating from them the
circumstances of time and place, and any other ideas that may determine
them to this or that particular existence. By this way of abstraction
they are made capable of representing more individuals than one; each of
which having in it a conformity to that abstract idea, is (as we call
it) of that sort. — Locke
To return to general words: it is plain, by what has been said, that
GENERAL and UNIVERSAL belong not to the real existence of things; but
are the inventions and creatures of the understanding, made by it for
its own use, and concern only signs, whether words or ideas. Words are
general, as has been said, when used for signs of general ideas, and so
are applicable indifferently to many particular things; and ideas are
general when they are set up as the representatives of many particular
things: but universality belongs not to things themselves, which are all
of them particular in their existence, even those words and ideas which
in their signification are general. When therefore we quit particulars,
the generals that rest are only creatures of our own making; their
general nature being nothing but the capacity they are put into, by the
understanding, of signifying or representing many particulars. For the
signification they have is nothing but a relation that, by the mind of
man, is added to them. — Locke
It's we who sort the world into this kind of thing and that kind of thing. This is against the notion of those 'supposed real essences.'I would not here be thought to forget, much less to deny, that Nature,
in the production of things, makes several of them alike: there is
nothing more obvious, especially in the races of animals, and all things
propagated by seed. But yet I think we may say, THE SORTING OF THEM
UNDER NAMES IS THE WORKMANSHIP OF THE UNDERSTANDING, TAKING OCCASION,
FROM THE SIMILITUDE IT OBSERVES AMONGST THEM, TO MAKE ABSTRACT GENERAL
IDEAS, and set them up in the mind, with names annexed to them, as
patterns or forms, (for, in that sense, the word FORM has a very proper
signification,) to which as particular things existing are found to
agree, so they come to be of that species, have that denomination, or
are put into that CLASSIS. For when we say this is a man, that a horse;
this justice, that cruelty; this a watch, that a jack; what do we else
but rank things under different specific names, as agreeing to those
abstract ideas, of which we have made those names the signs? And what
are the essences of those species set out and marked by names, but those
abstract ideas in the mind; which are, as it were, the bonds between
particular things that exist, and the names they are to be ranked under?
And when general names have any connexion with particular beings, these
abstract ideas are the medium that unites them: so that the essences of
species, as distinguished and denominated by us, neither are nor can
be anything but those precise abstract ideas we have in our minds. And
therefore the supposed real essences of substances, if different from
our abstract ideas, cannot be the essences of the species WE rank
things into. — Locke
The idea of the universality of mathematics had to be abandoned with non-Euclidean alternative mathematics. — David Mo
Otherwise, Kant was right about knowledge a priori. Just it is not so much a priori than he thought. — David Mo
Of course, Kant is a man of his time, and the debate of his time was between empiricists and rationalists. But to equate his starting point with Locke seems risky to me. In empiricism the concept of object is formed empirically (whether it is mathematical or not). In Kant it predates sensations. Without a previous concept of cause the game with the data of the senses would be chaotic. — David Mo
If I remember correctly, Locke introduces some rationalism in his empiricism when he considers the mathematical world of things universally factual by giving them a material body: atoms. This is another matter, but it is also contrary to the Kantian starting point. — David Mo
That things in themselves are only thought is correct, but everything a human perceives is also thought. On the other hand, to say a thing in itself is ONLY thought implies its existence is not necessary. — Mww
This next quote is from a dead link. Not sure who the author is, maybe also Solomon.The leading theme of [the story of Continental philosophy after 1750] is the rise and fall of an extraordinary concept of the self. The self in question is no ordinary self, no individual personality, nor even one of the many heroic or mock-heroic personalities of the early nineteenth century. The self that becomes the star performer in modern European philosophy is the transcendental self, or transcendental ego, whose nature and ambitions were unprecedentedly arrogant, presumptuously cosmic, and consequently mysterious. The transcendental self was the self ---timeless, universal, and in each one of us around the globe and throughout history. Distinguished from our individual idiosyncracies, this was the self we shared. In modest and ordinary terms it was called 'human nature.' In must less modest, extraordinary terminology, the transcendental self was nothing less than God, the Absolute Self, the World Soul. — Solomon
The exalted sense of the importance of the self arose from the subtle shift Kant introduced into Descartes's proposal. In the Kantian system, the Cartesian self became not just the focus of philosophical attention but the entire subject matter of philosophy. Rather than viewing the self as one of several entities in the world, Kant envisioned the thinking self in a sense "creating" the world - that is, the world of its own knowledge. The focus of philosophical reflection ever since has been this world-creating self.
The universalizing of the self readily followed. Underlying Kant's philosophy was the presumption that in all essential matters every person everywhere is the same. When Kant's self reflected on itself, it came to know not only itself, but all selves, as well as the structure of any and every possible self.
The transcendental pretense evident in Kant's philosophy helped produce "the white philosopher's burden." Kant's presumption that all selves resemble each other led some philosophers to conclude that they should be able to construct a universal human nature. Even thinkers (like Kant) who never left their hometowns should be able to make authoritative pronouncements on human nature and morality. — unknown
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